Trailer trash

Love turns Hollywood neon

Director Nick Love has made a fond tribute to the cult Alan Clarke TV film about football hooligans, The Firm. The 1989 original featured one of Gary Oldman's finest performances, as Bex, the estate agent who turns into a snarling hooligan leader at the weekends. Love's remake enters the story, based on the original script by Al Hunter Ashton, via a different route, setting it in 1984 and telling it through the eyes of a younger innocent called Dom (Calum McNab) who wants to belong to the gang but isn't up for the grim violence orchestrated by Bex, played this time by Paul Anderson.

The film is a celebration of casual clobber (Ellesse quilted jackets, Trimm Trabs, Fila Terrindas), 80s music (Kool and the Gang, Yarborough & Peoples) and British sub-culture. Nothing escapes Love's cheeky 80s makeover, even the legendary Warner Bros logo which, as Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" kicks in for the opening credits, lights up in electric pink neon like a nightclub. I'm not sure what Los Angeles honchos will make of it if the film ever comes out in America (it'll need subtitling if it does) but I hear WB's European boss Josh Berger saw the logo - only ever previously altered over 75 years by The Dark Knight - and joined in the fun. The Firm is released on 18 September.

Moriarty mystery

So, is Brad Pitt joining Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes reboot? The film, scheduled for a Christmas release, is undergoing three weeks of reshoots in London, and rumours last week suggested Brad - a mate of Guy's from Snatch days - was in town to play Moriarty after studio bosses insisted the famous villain appear. However, British actor Mark Strong plays baddie Lord Blackwood in this version, and recently told me his character contained elements of Moriarty. The Brad idea, I now understand, was to have him lurk in a few scenes to prepare audiences for a sequel in which Moriarty does feature more fully. Again, more complications - the latest development I've heard is that this has been ditched after Pitt's projected fees drove the budget dangerously high. Elementary, this film business.